With the possible exception of Santa Claus, no man does better with bitches over the holidays. Like nectarines or oranges, pussy is a seasonal fruit that starts desiccating in the fall and all but disappears from stores around Thanksgiving. If you’re a forager who didn’t squirrel away something during bountiful times, you’ll be fighting over scraps during the starving season.

I’ve never met a single, straight man who likes the holidays, and then also does well with women. And, if you think about it, it makes perfect sense: the holidays are a massive inconvenience to the average bachelor. They offer nothing to him. If you’re in a big city or college town, girls go home to wherever they transplanted from. In other cases, friends, cousins, college roommates, ex-boyfriends, and every other possible pest comes out of the woodwork to “visit.” Girls enter a psychological state of mind that’s antagonistic to banging. And, that only speaks to those who have managed to remain single through the winter. Many of the better chicks snatched up short-term “boyfriends” in the fall and started to disappear from the public by the time Daylight Savings ended. Even the girls you are banging can become flakier when holiday commitments start rearing their ugly heads.

Every venue you use to meet women gets more desolate, with the quantity and quality of women dropping precipitously. Do you meet girls in bars and dance spots? Suddenly the already unfavorable ratios are twice as bad. Do you frequent cafes and stores? Well, look around. Now “families” and ugly girls have replaced the eligible hotties who where in those same chairs in August. The trend even applies to the virtual world. From every corner of the North American continent, reports are coming in that response rates on online-dating sites are down to abysmal figures. Guys who are getting responses are mostly engaging in tepid one- or two-message conversations that die out quickly.

All of these trends are threefold if you’re in the Northern latitudes where the cold and dark conspire to make the famine even more brutal.

We all know the Aesop fable about the ant and the grasshopper. While the ant diligently stored away for the winter, the grasshopper goofed off. When the winter came along, the grasshopper is forced to beg the ant for food. The asshole ant responds by telling the grasshopper to dance and sing away the winter like he’d done the summer. “Idleness,” the fable teaches, “brings want.” I start the summer like the ant, swearing to stash away some quality trim for the holidays, only to keep postponing it until it’s too late.

With my regulars away or flaking, I recently found myself in a grasshopper moment. I was working in an empty café when a plain-looking 5.5 sat near me. Only weeks earlier, I would have shaken my head at her clumsy work—that rendered her at least a solid point below her potential—and returned to my book. Instead, I texted my buddy a description. “I’m thinking about approaching.”

Thankfully, he talked me off the ledge, but–like every year at this time–I’m grateful the holidays are over.